We purchased a whole-home generator a couple of years ago. Since I founded a fairly popular local weather site, Space City Weather, it’s critical that I remain online during storms. I wasn’t sure whether we would lose power where I lived, as we were out of the highest-risk zone for winds. But sure enough, at 4 am on Monday morning, the lights blinked off. Fortunately, the generator kicked on—all good.
Our Internet service provider, Xfinity, went out less than two hours later. We have excellent LTE service from T-Mobile locally, so I turned my mobile phone into a hotspot. This worked well for a few hours as the storm raged. But by around 8 am CT, the local tower lost power and, because it was using backup power, changed to support only texting and voice services. I could not even load minimal webpages on my iPhone.
This was… not good. Later that day I drove through the weakening storm and, I am sorry to admit, some high water, to reach a friend’s house about 45 minutes away. He still had power and Internet, and I needed to write updates about Beryl’s impacts. You don’t realize how much you miss the Internet until it’s gone.
Later on Monday evening, my wife found a Best Buy electronics store that had reopened after the storm, and, walking through the exit door as they were closing for the night, snagged the last Starlink Standard kit. I wasn’t sure how well this would work since we’re surrounded by trees where I live. (Big, tall trees that were shaken to kingdom come by Beryl and have made a huge mess of things.)
Credit:
Starlink app
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Credit:
Starlink app
As the Sun set on Monday night, I was walking around my backyard, trying to find a spot with the fewest obstructions. Finally, I clambered up on the roof and jerry-rigged the dish in a semi-stable location with some duct tape and prayers. The Starlink app was still complaining that the dish was misaligned by a few degrees, but baby, it’s either where I have it or that sucker is falling off the roof.
